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The maximum plan I can get for bandwidth limit is 1500GB/month. Some providers say they offer unlimited, but when I called them, none are willing to actually offer let's say 3000GB/month. Right now I use about 50GB/day or 1500GB/month. I checked on some CDNs such as CloudFlare and they all offer enterprise plans, which are multiple thousand USD per month. Right now I am a one person startup and can't even remotely afford that. For the current hosting I am paying $200/year and it has almost enough bandwidth. Almost.

Here is my use case:

I have a few 100 JSON files stored on server (using a hosting provider), which change once per minute. Clients (mobile app) then downloads some of these files periodically. Due to this, if I were to use CDN, they need to cache the changes at least every minute and that's why the cost would be so high. I have already optimized the files for size as much as possible.

What are the alternatives? Should I be using some kind of a cloud service like Amazon EC or Google Cloud? I have many PHP scripts which are running periodically using Cron and I don't want to be changing these and rewrite them in JS or some other language.

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  • Sorry but recommendations regarding hosting and discussions are off-topic on Pro Webmasters. – Simon Hayter♦ Dec 7 '18 at 17:17
  • I will add... Cloudflare Professional $20 caters for most websites and reduces server-side requests by 50-75% – Simon Hayter♦ Dec 7 '18 at 17:21
  • Alright, then close the thread then. Let me just add that I specifically wrote that files change once a minute and CloudFlare free caches the files once per hour. The enterprise option (7$k/month) caches once per 30sec. – Primož Kralj Dec 7 '18 at 17:22
  • err? just use file versioning... that way Cloudflare doesn't need to be refreshed. – Simon Hayter♦ Dec 7 '18 at 17:24
  • Furthermore, most hosts that offer unlimited/unmetered bandwidth will honour this but in their acceptable usage policies, you are allocated to X amount of CPU time, Memory and IO usage. Using Cloudflare reduces ram, cpu and IO usage. How big are these json files? – Simon Hayter♦ Dec 7 '18 at 17:28
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Find two new ISPs, bond your network, approach your original ISP for better service.

If ISP number one doesn't offer quicker service and a larger cap then drop them.

Another advantage of bonding is that if you lose one connection you're still up.

Of course it costs more but you get what you pay for and if it's a business you are lucky they don't charge for a business plan already. I occasionally exceed my limit but they've never called me; once when I called them they said that I had only gone over a few times and that I could go with a less expensive plan. YMMV.

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  • I am using a web hosting provider, not my own server. – Primož Kralj Dec 7 '18 at 13:48
  • Yes, you can say you want to bond externally for redundancy or accept their plea to you let them use two wires they promise will be up. Worst outcome is you stick with them and pay 2x. – Rob Dec 7 '18 at 13:51
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    I just got an answer and it seems to be possible to pay more and get more bandwidth. At first their answer was that this plan was the maximum, but now it seems you can buy just additional bandwidth. So problem solved. Thanks! – Primož Kralj Dec 7 '18 at 14:23

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